Weather Service Predicts Record Highs for Central Texas this Week. Time to break out the shorts and the lighter cameras...

Actor/Talent/Model and Friend, Noellia, and I spent a couple hours one Summer 
making photos on one of the hottest days of the year. 
That's the Barton Creek Spillway in the background.

We were using a Sony Next-7 and the 50mm f1.8 lens at the time. 

Lots of fun stuff to shoot when everyone is out playing in the water.

The national weather service is predicting that we're about to get socked with some record high temperatures near the end of this week and over the next weekend. There's a high pressure zone parked right over the top of the Austin and San Antonio area. You would think that Austinites would head indoors and find places like cold, dark movie theaters and chilly malls to lurk around in, and I'm sure some of our recent transplants will, but most of the city's core population will see it as an excuse to hit the local pools; natural and manmade.

I'm trying to be better about too much sun exposure so I've shifted to the 7:00 a.m. swim practice for the Summer months. The water is getting warmer but that didn't stop our masters swimmers from hitting the pool in force today. We had four and five people circling per lane and another group stepping in at 8:00 a.m. as we exited the early workout. As the water temp goes up our yardage tends to go down a bit. It's just as easy to get over heated in a warm pool as anywhere else.

So, what are the long practiced tips for surviving photo shoots in the outdoors in the Texas Summer?

Here are mine:

1. Start early in the day. Get to your locations at first light instead of waiting for the sun to warm everything up. If you start early you can finish early. While the sun might be at its peak around noon to one p.m. the heat continues to rise until about 5 p.m. Finishing by 2 or 3 pm is how the landscapers do it....

2. Don't wait until you feel thirsty to start drinking water! By the time you feel thirsty you are already getting dehydrated. Start with a big glass of water even before the first cup of coffee and then repeat all day long. And, actually, yes; coffee counts as part of your hydration, if you are an acclimated coffee drinker.

3. Just as oil companies transition from Winter gas to Summer gas formulations it may be time to leave the Nikon D5 or Canon 1DX and the big ass zooms back at the house and transition to "Summer" cameras. I'm back to packing the much smaller and lighter Panasonic GH5's and a smaller assortment of lenses. The heat makes for different priorities AND the light levels seem abundant. 

Less weight makes for less work which makes for less thermal build up in your own system.

4. I own a bunch of black camera bags but I also own a big Domke camera bag that is a very light beige color. All those black bags and cases do a great job absorbing heat. The beige one does a decent job reflecting it. I also take a FlexFill (circular collapsible reflector) along and use it as a bag cover when I have to stop and shoot in an area where there is no shade. I put my bag down, pop open the reflector and put it on top with the silver side facing up toward the sun. 

You may think that cameras are built to handle heat but anything over 104f (and a black camera can hit 140 in direct sun) causes increased noise and artifacting. If you are shooting video you'll find shooting in direct sun can also cause so much heat build up that your camera shuts down! I'm always trying to find ways to keep black cameras and lenses covered when I shoot in full sun. 

One more thing, if you are used to relying on hard stop infinity settings on your lenses be aware that the heat can cause metal lenses and glass to expand and will change marked focus accuracy!

5. Wear a freakin hat!!! You need to create your own shade and when the sun is brutal a good hat will make a big difference. Get one with some good front overhang so it can help keep sunlight off your viewfinder. 

6. Dress for coolness but be sure to cover up exposed skin or douse it regularly with sunscreen. I prefer to cover with loose, thinner clothing than to coat myself with chemicals. There are lots of technical shirts, even long sleeved ones, with high SPF ratings.

7. It may be a perfect shot that you are waiting for but if you feel too hot it's time to make for the shade, douse yourself from head to toe with water and stay still for a while, letting evaporative cooling do its work. If you feel ill effects then get into the air conditioning. Another shot will certainly be there tomorrow. Heat stroke takes all the fun out of photography...

8. If you plan on using a tripod you might want to get a nice light wooden one that won't transfer heat when you grab it to move to the next location. If you don't want to buy a new one then wrap some fabric around the thick, top legs and secure with gaffer's tape. At least when you grab the tripod legs you won't burn your hands. 

9. Don't leave your cameras in your enclosed car; especially if you are parking in full sun. Car interiors get super hot and while the circuitry in your camera may not fry you can imagine the damage cumulative heat does to rubber weather sealing, faux leather texturing and LCDs. Just take your camera in with you like we all used to do in the film days. We all knew that film didn't mix well with heat....

10. Instead of long expeditions think in smaller chunks of shooting interspersed with lots of stops for air conditioning and beverages. Topping off a day of shooting with a nice craft beer might be a good way to restore some lost electrolytes....

That's pretty much my list. We could get more detailed and talk about keeping a couple gallons of water in your car, making sure your tires aren't getting brittle, and a bunch about shoes, but I'm aiming the above advice toward urban shooters who aren't in remote areas. But, Heat is Heat.

An incidental shot from the tech rehearsal last night that.....

...makes me appreciate the nuanced eye of the the show's lighting designer and also adds to my appreciation of the optical qualities of the Nikon 70-210mm f4-5.6D Ai Zoom lens. An elegant rendering from the long end of a consumer zoom lens, used wide open...

From: Sundays in the park with George. Zach Theatre. Starts this week.

Old School. Shot at a fashion show in South Beach, on the beach. Old school film work with a Leica R8 and the venerable 90mm Summicron.

Two assignments in one city in one week. It was 2001. We were Shooting for a telecom company called, Broadwing Communications. We were shooting for a south American fashion show. We did digital for the corporate folks and color negative film for the fashion. Burning the candle at both ends; pounding the room service at the Delano South Beach Hotel. That's back when people really knew how to spend money....

A quick review of my 2nd copy of the Nikon 70-210mm f4-5.5 Ai Zoom. A cheap, battered copy I bought for $75.

I'm always a bit curious about older lenses. I'm a cynic. I think camera makers use new lens design tools not necessarily to make lenses that are distinctly better than their ancestors but to make the new lens designs easier to manufacture and cheaper to make. I'm sure new glass types are wonderful and some of the newest lenses can do amazing things, in the right hands, but I am equally sure that there is a general race on to make lenses more uniform; more consistently consistent, and if they get some optical improvements then that's considered a bonus...

To a degree I think lens design is driven by an uninformed and loud group of consumers who have different ideas about what is essential in a lens than the lens designers themselves did a decade or so ago. The emphasis now is on lightweight, fast apertures and (because of very poorly conceived lens test interpretations) sharpness across a flat field (to the detriment of potential sharpness in the center 2/3rds of the lens). 

I was shopping for a 70-200mm lens last week, knowing that I'd soon be shooting some theater productions with the newly acquired Nikon cameras. I was shocked to see the price of the current 70-200mm f2.8 Nikon lens was $2800. I was so miffed at the rampant inflation for this product category that I abandoned my search for a current product all together and decided to plumb the opposite end of the market. I had in my own inventory a Nikon 70-210mm f4.0-5.6 manual focusing zoom that I'd picked up cheap a while ago. I subsequently read that Nikon doubled the focusing speed on the "D" series version of the same lens and I searched out a copy of that version. The one I found is very functional but a bit beat up. That's okay since I spent only $75. 

I took it along with me last night to do technical scout of Zach Theatre's newest production in anticipation of the "official" shoot we'll be doing on Tuesday. I didn't have overly optimistic expectations that the old 70/210 would be anywhere near as good as a modern lens but I wanted to try it: under stage lighting (this play has a very contrasty lighting design...), handheld (no VR back when this lens was made and originally sold) and at it's wide open aperture (look, I figure I'd just be using this for the longer end and it's already f5.6 from about 105 onward).  Seems like a viciously unfair test for a lens that's decades old --- right?

Well, I'm not so sure. Below are three variations from the same digital frame. The older screw drive lens was able to nail focus quickly and well. The lens also resisted flaring. But the thing that I appreciated is that the image is nicely sharp. As sharp as I expected it could be on a Nikon D800 set to 3200 ISO. 

After seeing the results and comparing similar files shot with the 24-120mm f4.0 and the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art lens I've called off my shopping and researching for a newer or faster telephoto zoom. While it may not check all the boxes for you this one delivers enough image quality for me. If I need a better lens I'll pull one of the Olympus Pro lenses out of the drawer and put it on a Panasonic GH5. Not a bad deal for a whopping $75. Sorry, no link. You'll have to find your own.

The full frame.

A tight crop.

Getting into the 100%, pixel peeping realm.

I'm as interested in cheap lenses as I am fascinated by lenses that purport to scrape the ceilings of possiblility.

A VSL blog reader, Stephen Kennedy, kindly sent me a lens. He seemed to understand my attraction to older, less expensive, more mainstream lenses from days gone by. The lens he sent along is a Nikon Series E, 36-72mm f3.5 Ais. It's manual focus only and a short zoom lens and it fits right into the genre of lenses I like to put on the front of my cameras when I head out in the midday sun for a bout of photographing. A terse zoom range, no frills and imbued with very decent performance- especially when used at f5.6 and beyond. 

There are some other Nikon Series E lenses, released in conjunction with the low cost Nikon EM SLR, that show up on the radar screens of old lens aficionados, the most popular being the 100mm f2.8 and the very, very well regarded 75-150mm f3.5. All of them were above average performers but never attained a huge following when new mostly because they represented a move away from Nikon's traditional heavy metal lens construction which always seemed to promise a certain indestructibility. 

I put a 52mm circular polarizer on the lens, attached it to the front of a Nikon D800 and set out to see just how good ( or bad ) this little jewel of a zoom lens could be...

Overall, I found it to be smooth, fairly sharp and well behaved. The one aspect that could be a deal killer for someone looking around for an inexpensive alternative to today's pricier lens fare would be the lens's close focus limitation of 4 feet. It makes casual portraits a bit dicey. 

OT: In case anyone is wondering Captcha has done a great job smashing the spam.

The torrent of spam I've been enduring has ground to a halt. None today. Two weeks ago there would have been dozens of invitations for hair regrowth, marriages to foreign super models and so much more. I should have added Captcha to the blog years ago. 

I love being asked if I am a robot. 

If I were to be a robot I'd hope to be eight feet tall, ripped like a Spartan and encased in a solid Vibranium shell. And I would go looking for people who spam. With my adamantium claws out.

F*&K Spam.

A mopey Saturday thinking about getting older in a what is purported to be a young person's field. Screw it. We're not done yet.

It's going to be another hot day in central Texas. My brain is working overtime these days and I have trouble sleeping in past 6 or 6:30 in the morning. I'm thinking about what comes next. What will the next set of wrinkles in my working life be? How will I move the business forward? Is photography really evaporating or is it my own personal engagement that seems threatened? 

With my only child having successfully graduated from college I no longer feel the tug of complete financial responsibility pulling at me. But that's been replaced by a new worry: Am I no longer relevant to the world of commercial photography? Have a I crossed some universal but invisible boundary that will progressively limit my connection to the business of taking photographs? Will age discrimination or disengagement finally thin out my selection of clients until I am left sitting next to the computer, a pile of gear next to me, waiting for someone --- anyone to reach out with an e-mail or text and invite me to the next engagement?

When I look in the mirror I seem old now. My hair has shifted from brown to gray to mostly white. I have age spots. The people selling tickets at the theaters no longer even ask before tendering my "senior" discount ticket. I have multiple pairs of bi-focal glasses; some in the house, a few in the studio and an extra set in the car. I like the glasses because they are sometimes effective in hiding some of the wrinkles around my eyes. 

These are all external cues but on the inside I can't shake the feeling that I'm an 18 year old trapped in the wrong container. I watch many people sink into that gloomy sense of adult resignation but I watch just as many of my friends fight the progression toward the trappings of being older with every breath. In fact, I've even come to believe that an egregious expenditure on a new toy is really the desire to affirm that there's more life left to live; that the purchase of the hot new camera or the amazing new car is really an unconscious act meant to convey that you believe you'll be around for a while to enjoy the fruits of the purchase. That you are continuing in the continuum. 

The house was quiet when I got up. The dog looked up at my from her bed, metaphorically shook her head and then, with a sigh, nestled back into the upholstery and dropped back into a nice, even sleep. I went into the kitchen and made myself a couple of multiple-grain toaster waffles and ate them while drinking a glass of water. I chided myself for a lack of courage --- my real 18 year old self would have eaten cold pizza just before the Saturday morning swim workout. He might have been going to the pool directly from a late date...

I felt slow and stuffy and tired on my way to the pool but when I finally hit the cool, fresh water it only took three or four laps to brighten up and get into my groove. I swam in a lane adjacent to one of my favorite swimmers. She's competitive and driven and at least 14 years younger than me but I matched her lap for lap as we pushed the intervals down and I hit the end of each set with my heart pounding and my lungs greedy for more air. I savored every flip turn that I executed well. I focused on the front end of my freestyle stroke trying to grip a hold on the water and move my body past that point. It's as much a mental practice as anything else. 

The sun came up fully on the pool, it was 8:30 and we'd done our 3200 yards for the morning and yanked ourselves out of the water. An unspoken belief among swimmers is that if you are in good enough shape to swim masters you never use a ladder to get out of a pool and you never put a knee down on the deck during your exit. You place your hands wide on the deck and pull yourself straight up high enough to toss your feet under you. Sure, if you are nursing a bum shoulder you are temporarily exempt but, a knee on the deck.....? 

But what does any of this have to do with photography? I'll conjecture that a large measure of the disquiet I feel right now is that I'm becoming aware that peoples' perspective about "who" photographers really are comes from the advertising created by the people who make products for photographers. Their ads mostly feature youth as practitioners of the modern photographic art.  There are some hoary holdovers who've continued to have media relevance well into their senior years. I just read Thom Hogan's article about the Sony junket last month. He was rubbing shoulders with venerable like Bob Krist and a few others but the event was dominated by the YouTube Youth Gangs like Kai and his cohorts,  and the (now aging) hipster crew from DP Review. Jordan and Chris, as of late from DP Review's newly revitalized video channel, and many other newly post adolescent photo/video/bloggers. 

The message in advertising, and video blogging on YouTube and elsewhere is that photographers are young, hip, innovative and aspirational. They spend their days snapping pix of their beautiful boyfriends and girlfriends and virtually sashaying around Instagram with an air of coolness that increases with every media post and its attendant "likes". I guess I see enough of the programming to have understood the message and taken it to heart: "this is a young person's game in a young person's universe." When you see the meme often enough it's hard not to internalize it and worry that you've become as obsolete as an old Canon Rebel. As worn as a film era Leica.

This messaging misrepresents reality. All around me the successful photographers I encounter are almost without exception past forty. They are comfortably established, they jumped and struggled up the waterfall, from film to digital, like successful salmon in the run. They are the ones with the credit lines that allow for impulse purchase follies like medium format cameras, European flash systems, and Billingham bags. But the marketers miss the mark with their messaging. They only have eyes for the millennials now, the one segment of the population swimming in student debt. The generation hit hardest, economically, by the giant recession of 2008-2009. The generation in full embrace of the iPhone as the camera of choice. A misguided read of marketing stats if I've ever seen one...

When I write this all out and think about it logically I suppose life has always been like this. Every generation grows and peaks and wanes. Advertising has always preferred the cute and the young. Understanding it makes me feel better. I love taking photographs and it's really not up to me to determine the relevance of my craft to our current culture. I don't have enough data points to ever really know. It's enough for now to still have good work and still have the desire to get out every day and visually interpret my world in my own way.  And with role models like Duane Michals and Elliott Erwitt how can we go wrong? Persist or perish. There are no other choices. 

But DAMN. Isn't photography a blast?!

In car selling circles the Toyota Avalon was smirkingly referred to 

as "the geezer pleaser" for it's soft ride, ample trunk and 

welcoming interior appointments. If there is a camera that 

I would call a "geezer pleaser" it's got to be something like

the Nikon D800 or D810. Lots of nostalgia, good performance

and middle of the road comfort. Some would say it's the Nikon DF but 

I think that's more like a vinyl topped, two tone Riviera...

In a flash of coherence this is sometimes the message I get from online discussions 

and advertising about photography.

I like the pool because I can't take my cameras in with me. 

It's just me and a couple thousand gallons of water and some people 

who want to swim faster than me. Whether or not they succeed is, in some

part, up to me.

Now it's time to change gears and go to lunch with the family. Later in the day it will be time for some fun photography. What Robin Wong would call, "Shutter Therapy."